Past Midnight (38 page)

“What the hell are you doing?” Her smile swallowed any bite in the words.

“I’m going to fuck my wife in the middle of the day in the center of my bed.” He yanked his shirt over his head. “What are you going to do about it?”

She stared for a long moment, a hint of shadow passing through her eyes, then she got to all fours and crawled across the bed to him. She laid her hand on top of his as he tugged his belt loose. “I’m going to suck my husband’s big, fat cock.”

This was what he’d craved in those hours past midnight. Her laughter, her banter, her dirty talk, when making love was hot sex and so much fucking fun. She’d given it to him during their games, but she’d denied it to him in their bed. “Strip first,” he ordered, “or you don’t get any cock.”

“Hah. You’re dying to give it to me.” But she pulled off her jacket, tossed it, slipped the buttons of her blouse loose, shoving it off her shoulders where, still tucked in, it dangled over the waistband of her slacks. Her bra was utilitarian cotton and oh so sexy. With one finger, he slowly pushed the strap off her shoulder, then down her arm until her nipple popped free.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, the backs of his eyes aching, his breath catching in his throat.

She held his palm to her breast. “I love you.”

He raised his gaze to hers. It had been so long. “I never stopped loving you.” They would never stop missing Jay, but there could be moments like this, where they felt the connection like the beautiful, delicate threads of a web, unmistakably there yet so easily broken if you weren’t careful. They had not been careful with each other for so very long.

Putting a knee to the mattress, he knelt before her. Slowly, with care and deliberation, he unsnapped the back clasp of her bra. Holding her with his gaze, he slid the fabric from between them. Her nipples brushed his chest.

“So good,” he said, then pushed the thick luxuriance of her hair back from her neck. Breathing deep of her sweet scent, he licked the shell of her ear.

She shivered, then laid her palm flat, taking his nipple between her index and middle finger, squeezing. His cock jumped. “Even better,” she murmured. Bending to his chest, she licked him, bit his nipple lightly, then soothed the skin with her tongue. “You taste perfect.”

They removed the rest of their clothes in fluid, synchronous motions as if they performed an intimate dance. He was sure it would never happen that way again. He didn’t care.

Face-to-face, breast-to-breast, she stroked his cock. “I love how hard you get. That amazes me.”

It was always how he’d been for her. How he always would be. “You know what I want?”

She shook her head, her hair brushing him. “Tell me.”

“Missionary.”

She laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“That’s how I want it.” He trailed a finger down her side, then between them, tracing her pussy, testing. She was wet. “I want your arms around me, your lips on me. I want to see you.”

She laid back in the center of the bed, spread herself for him. “Take me, I’m yours.” Despite the quip, there was a momentousness to her words, a glow in her eyes.

There were no preliminaries, no foreplay. He simply filled her and filled himself with her. She tangled her fingers in his hair, pulled his head down, took his lips with a long drugging kiss. Slow, steady, sweet, hot, he made love to her until she writhed beneath him, moaned into his mouth, her pussy working him from the inside.

Someone whispered “I love you” over and over. He took her to the rhythm of that chant, their chant, loved her with the sweetness in those words. When he came deep inside her, she became his again, finally.

SHE COULDN’T MOVE TO LOOK AT THE CLOCK. IN FACT, SHE DIDN’T care. The work would be there tomorrow.

“We should do this more often,” she whispered against his neck, her body, hot and marvelously sweaty, plastered along the length of his. He was all smooth, hard muscle, the phantom feel of him inside her, his scent all over her, her own body-wash aroma sweet but changed, becoming his, utterly masculine.

He rolled, pinned her beneath him. “We should do it at work.” His dark eyes sparkled as he raised a devilish brow. “In fact, I have this fantasy of you walking into my office, closing the door, sitting in the chair, and lifting your skirt.” He dropped a kiss to her nose. “Then you whip out your vibrator and let me watch.”

She laughed. “You’re so filthy.” Then she cupped his face, held him, her heart beating loudly in her own ears. “Is that over? All the kinky things we did?”

He searched her face, his gaze moving from her left eye to her right, down to her lips, back up. “I loved watching you come. I loved your pleasure. I loved holding you while he licked my come out of you and made you climax all over again.” Even now, against her, she felt how much he’d loved it in the hardening of his cock. “But all I really needed was this, you in my arms, seeing me, loving me. I don’t need the rest the way I need you.”

“I don’t know if I want those things again. Maybe. Maybe not. Later. I don’t know. Can you wait?” She wasn’t ready to think about it now.

He kissed her soundly. “I can wait forever.”

He already had waited. She moved sinuously beneath him. “What we really need is some time off, a long vacation.”

“Good God.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You? Take off more than a day from work, especially in January.”

“Maybe we should do it in February. Valentine’s Day.” She burrowed her face against his shoulder. “Maybe I work too much.” She didn’t say
we
. The problem had never been Dominic. “We need time to learn to be together again.”

“Yes. We do.” He kissed her ear. “I love you. I have always loved you. I always will love you. But things are different now.”

She knew he meant Jay. She knew he meant their life without Jay. They’d said so many things today. There were so many things left to be said. They had to admit to each other that the ache would never go, but they would have to go on anyway. “I never stopped loving you. I just forgot how to show you.”

He wiped a tear from her cheek she hadn’t realized had fallen. Then he rolled with her once more, pulling her astride him. “Do you know how I survived?”

She leaned down, pressed her body to his. “No.”

“Past midnight,” he murmured, his eyes as deep, dark, and soulful as the hour of which he spoke. “I lived for when you touched me then.”

When things seemed their darkest, when she didn’t think she could go on, she’d always turned to him, and it had always been past midnight. “You were the only way I survived, too.”

“Don’t ever stop touching me like that in the middle of the night,” he whispered.

She put her lips to his. “I never will.” Then she kissed him.

“FAITH. OVER HERE.” TRINITY GREEN WAVED FRANTICALLY FROM the other side of the ballroom, her voice falling into a sudden hush as the dance number ended.

Faith cringed as she suddenly felt every eye on her, the partygoers around her stepping back slightly so that she was in a little circle all her own. The indisputable center of attention.

Trinity would never understand why any woman in her right mind
wouldn’t
want to be the center of attention.

Faith, obviously not in her right mind, loathed it. Her friend was now skirting the dance floor, a dark-haired man in tow. Faith smiled. Men loved being towed by Trinity. In addition to her blond hair, Aphrodite looks, and flawless body, she was quite a lovable person.

They’d been best friends since the seventh grade when Trinity had rescued Faith from a spiteful group of girls. Middle school girls could be terrors on anyone different. Though their fathers had known each other for years up to that point, Trinity hadn’t seemed to notice Faith existed. Yet Trinity stood by her that day, and Faith would forever love her for it.

“Sweetie, there’s someone I’m dying for you to meet.” Trinity grabbed Faith’s hand, then seized her companion’s, and forced their handshake. “This is my best friend in all the world, Faith Castle. And Faith, this is Connor Kingston. He’s working with Lance at Daddy’s company.” Lance was Trinity’s brother and heir to the Green company throne.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Castle.”

Out of force of habit due to her short stature, Faith tended to look at hands instead of faces during introductions. But something in Connor Kingston’s voice, the husky quality of it, like a rhythm guitar strumming a deep chord, made her look up. And up. She was five foot four in the heels she wore tonight, five foot two without them. Connor was over six.

He had the blackest hair she’d ever seen, so black the chandelier lighting gleamed off it. Charcoal eyes gazed down at her—though charcoal seemed such a boring color. His were the shade of a moonlit midnight.

He and Trinity made a perfect couple.

“And it’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kingston.”

Trinity snorted. “Give me a break. It’s Faith and Connor, okay? No more of that
Mr.
Kingston and
Miss
Castle stuff.”

Faith almost laughed hearing the names said so closely together. His king to her castle. Like a chess move. Or a statement on male to female relations.

Introductions done, Trinity stroked his black tuxedo-clad arm. “Connor, would you get us some champagne? I’m parched.” Not that Trinity would drink the whole glass. Too many calories.

Connor smiled. A wolf, tamed for the moment, grinning at a cute little bunny. “Of course.” He turned the smile on Faith, something flickered in his eyes, then his mouth crooked a little higher on one side.

If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought she’d made the wolf comment aloud.

“Isn’t he divine?” Trinity whispered as they watched him until he was swallowed up by the crowd at the bar.

“Absolutely.”

Then Trinity sighed. “It’s too bad he doesn’t have a cent to his name other than what Daddy’s paying him.”

“At least he has a job.”

Their small community of Silicon Valley elite, those left after the dot-com crash and the economic downturn a few years ago, could be broken down into two categories: those who had, and those who didn’t. Most of the didn’t-haves lived off the did-haves, not by working but by being charming and getting their entertainment written off as a tax-deductible business expense by the other half. Or, they married into the class they coveted.

“That’s the worst part,” Trinity moaned. “Everyone
knows
he works. Daddy would have a hissy fit if I even
mentioned
marrying an employee.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “But we could have a wild affair.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “You know, all that unbridled passion, the fear of being
caught.
” She shivered dramatically. “It sounds so intense.”

Agreeing completely, Faith wanted to shiver herself. With his dark good looks, Connor Kingston incited many a delicious fantasy. Trinity winked, and they scanned the crowd for him.

Faith spotted the back of his head. My, his shoulders were broad in the tuxedo. “I’ll leave you alone to work your magic.”

Trinity grabbed her arm. “You can’t run off. He wanted to meet you since I talk about you all the time.”

Faith gasped. “You do not.”

“Close your mouth, sweetie. I told him you’re the only one in the whole dissolute lot of us who has a calling.”

“What calling?”

Trinity huffed. “As a kindergarten teacher, of course, shaping young minds. You’re producing a better next generation.”

Faith taught because she loved children. And because she was sometimes terrified she’d never have any of her own. She was twenty-nine years old, thirty by the end of the year, and unless she married one of the didn’t-haves looking for a did-have wife, teaching might be the sum total exposure she had to children.

Yet Trinity was right, being a teacher was her calling. Which reminded her. Faith smiled to herself. “Do you know what little Roger Weederman said the other day?”

“That’s what I adore about you. You
love
the little monsters. When I have children, you have to quit your job and become their nanny. You’ll raise them to be little presidents.” Trinity spread her hands. “President of the company, president of the United States, president of the United Nations.”

Faith laughed. Heads turned. She sometimes laughed too boisterously, but when she was with Trinity, she couldn’t help herself. Trinity didn’t mean half of what she said. She liked to talk, especially at big bashes, saying outrageous things to anyone who would listen. She had, however, graduated from college with honors and would one day make a perfect first lady.

But Faith wasn’t going to be anyone’s nanny. She wanted children of her own.

Over the crowd, Faith spied Connor fast approaching. She wasn’t jealous of Trinity’s sleekness when matched against her own relative plumpness, but for some reason, she didn’t want to watch
him
do the usual mental comparison. “I really have to go before Mr. Stud-Muffin returns. He’s all yours.”